


Pillow Talk

by Kittenshift17



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drabble, F/M, offer for sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:34:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25164748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kittenshift17/pseuds/Kittenshift17
Summary: “Severus?” she called softly before he could slip out of the lab and to the flat he called home above it.He stopped, his back to her though she was certain he was listening closely to whatever she might have to say.“I wouldn’t be opposed to real pillow talk someday, if you were so inclined,” she admitted quietly, wondering if the fumes from her potion or the late hour had weakened her mind that she could state the truth of their situation so boldly.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Severus Snape
Comments: 20
Kudos: 213





	Pillow Talk

“I just don’t see why the reactor couldn’t be stabilised if we added powdered root of starthorn? It’s a perfectly acceptable stabiliser,” Hermione Granger asserted breathlessly, her mind running a mile a minute as she tried to unravel the problem at hand with the potion that kept exploding in her face. 

“Miss Granger, must you prattle so ceaselessly?” Severus Snape sighed, weary of her incessant chatter as she indefatigably persisted with her potions problem.

“Hmm?” she asked, turning to him and blinking owlishly.

He looked exhausted, she noted, frowning worriedly.

“Enough with the pillow talk,” he grumbled. “I’m tired.”

Hermione’s cheeks turned pink.

“Pillow talk?” she repeated, breathless now for another reason. 

In all the years she’d worked alongside him at the apothecary, never once had they stepped across that threshold between professional potioneers and something more. 

He huffed.

“What else would you call it after the climatic explosion you experienced just now?” he sneered, gesturing with one long finger to the mess littering their brewing lab - the result of her most recent potions mishap. 

“Well...” Hermione said, looking around guiltily and noting that the batch of Sleeping Draught he’d been brewing to sell at the shop was ruined - having turned a violent shade of pink thanks to the accidental inclusion of her exploded potion. 

Embarrassed, she cleared her throat and straightened her skirt, noting as she did so that the potion she’d exlpoded had eaten right through the fabric over her right thigh, baring the top of her stockings to his gaze.

“I apologize, Severus,” she offered quietly. “I will... cease my attempts to master this particular potion in our combined lab, here.”

He sighed and looked like he rather doubted it. 

“Starthorn would probably work to stabiliize the salamander blood reactor,” he told her gently. “But it would poison the drinker.”

“I... oh,” Hermione said, her eyes widening. “Bugger.”

In spite of his weariness, a smile threatened at the corners of his mouth and he huffed out a soft chuckle at her reply.

“I beleive it might be best to call it a day,” he told her, surprising her when he put his hand on her shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze before flicking his wand to vanish their potions and tidy the mess she’d caused. 

“I suppose you’re right,” Hermione sighed, glancing toward the clock on the wall and noting that it was well after midnight. Again. Time always got away from them when they were brewing. 

“Get some rest,” he told her gently. “Until tomorrow, Miss Granger.”

Hermione frowned as he headed for the door, noting that even now he walked with such silence but for the slight billow of his cloak.

“Severus?” she called softly before he could slip out of the lab and to the flat he called home above it.

He stopped, his back to her though she was certain he was listening closely to whatever she might have to say. 

“I wouldn’t be opposed to real pillow talk someday, if you were so inclined,” she admitted quietly, wondering if the fumes from her potion or the late hour had weakened her mind that she could state the truth of their situation so boldly.

In the fifteen years since the war had ended, life had not been kind to either survivor in that lab, but she had found solace working in the apothecary he had quietly opened on the corner of Knockturn and Diagon Alley. She had found solace in his company, too. For while half the world still imagined him a villain and the other half toted him a gallant hero, he was, at the end of the day, simply a rather unpleasant and lonely man with few friends, little patience, and an abundance of bitterness he carried with him everywhere he went. When the glory of vicotry wore away, Hermione had learned that young love was fleeting, and unpleasant memories were easier to forget through avoidance, and highschool friendships - even those that survived fierce battles and terrible wars - didn’t often survive into fully fledged adulthood. 

Severus Snape, for better or worse, was the one constant thing in her life that hadn’t changed in all the time she had known him. He had been a cruel and bitter man when he’d been her teacher at Hogwarts; he’d been a cruel and bitter man when they’d all beleived him naught but a Death Eater; and to this day he remained a cruel and bitter man who carved out a living on only his skill as a potion master, and little more. He was just as cutting a cruel when they brewed together for the shop as he had been when he’d instructed her at school. 

“It’s late, Miss Granger,” he replied quietly, without looking at her, though Hermione noted the way his shoulders tensed. “We’re both tired.”

Hermione suspected that was the only answer she would get on the subject, and that when tomorrow arrived, he would pretend she’d never mentioned it. 

“If you say so,” she sighed. “But my position on the matter won’t change.”

He put a hand to the doorframe that led to the backroom and the staircase to the upper level, his knuckles stark against the dark wood before slowly he turned to look at her.

“I am your employer, Miss Granger,” he reminded her. 

“You are,” Hermione nodded. 

“And before this, I was your teacher,” he continued.

“You were,” she agreed. 

“You understand, then, that continuing this conversation further would be inappropriate?” he finished, and that damnable eyebrow he loved to quirk to remind her of his mental superiority lifted in challenge.

“I fail to see how the three facts are related,” she countered quietly, holding his gaze steadily in a way she knew most people were too terrified to dare. “You were my teacher and you are my employer, but the fact remains that you and I have been carrying on this relationship well outside the parameters of employer and employee, or of teacher and student. And if I beleived that my perspective on this matter was skewed or incorrect, I’d have kept it to myself. But I’m not blind, or deaf, or idiotic, Severus, no matter what you might think of me.”

“Is that right?” he challenged.

“Yes,” Hermione said simply. “Now, if you wish to return to work tomorrow and speak nothing of the topic I will understand and refrain from mentioning it again, but it will not change the facts.”

“And what facts might those be, exactly?” he clarified, though from the hard glint in his eyes she was playing a dangerous game and ought to back down now or suffer the consequences.

“That if you were so inclined as to someday engage in pillow talk across the sheets from me I would not be opposed, and actually might be rather pleased about it,” Hermione said, raising her chin. “And that I don’t believe I’m alone in sometimes wishing that was already the case.”

“You don’t believe so?” he pushed, taking a step in her direction that really should’ve warned her that it was high time she just went home to bed, alone, like she usually did.

“If I’m mistaken, Severus, by all means, correct me,” Hermione said quietly. “But the truth is that I’m tired of this silly game we play where we dance around it and talk over it and stuff it away in dark corners where no one can see so that nothing will ever change in this place. If you actually imagine that any employee would put up with your foul temper and rude outbursts; that any normal employee would end up here with you until after midnight every other night, then I fear I might’ve warped your perspective of the workplace. Make no mistake, I do not weather your black moods and work hundreds of hours unpaid overtime for my health.”

“Then what are you doing here?” he challenged, and in that moment at the edge of his temper and the cusp of his scorn, she knew he wanted to wound her until she went away and couldn’t upset the bitter little world he’d built for himself here.

“Reveling in your company,” Hermione admitted quietly. “Taking solace in your companionship. Finding some manner of peace in your presence.”

“And yet, you seek to upset it by speaking this way,” he sneered, scowling at her.

“I seek to make myself known, Severus,” Hermione corrected him. “Difficult though I’m certain you believe it to be, I’ve grown quite fond of you these past ten years I’ve spent in your employ. At the end of each evening, I return home to my little flat and I might peruse a book or take a bath or fix an unsatisfying snack, or I might simply fall into bed. But it is all simply to pass the time until I can return here again the next morning where I know you will be waiting.”

She shrugged her shoulders rather helplessly and sighed before straightening her skirt and lifting her chin.

“In any case, I’ve said what I intended to say and so I will leave the matter with you to stew over, as I’ve no doubt you plan to do. If you have no interest in my offer, that’s perfectly alright and we shan’t mention it again. But if you do... well... you know where I’ll be.”

With that said, Hermione turned and walked across the lab and into the front room where the store was and where the fireplace was so that she might Floo home. He didn’t call after her or stop her, as she hoped he might, but then, Hermione had come to know Severus Snape very well over the course of her life and by now she knew that for all his towering temper, he wasn’t a rash or an impulsive man excepting instances of rage. And so she knew he would need time to think on what she’d said. He would need time to weigh it up in his mind and pick it apart until it made less sense than it did, and more sense than it perhaps should. It wouldn’t be tomorrow. It might not even be this week. In fact, it might not even be for several months that he might take her up on her offer of pillow talk and everything that ought to precede it, but that was okay. 

She’d said her piece, and now it would be up to him to decide if he wanted to risk this fragile yet comfortable thing they had cultivated by accepting her offer. The truth was, even if he didn’t, she couldn’t imagine herself going any place else. This was enough. This was home. And as she flooed back to her flat that felt less like a home than that shop did, Hermione could only hope the allure of anticipation; his curiosity at what she might utter amid pillow talk would be enough to tempt him into trying it, at least once.


End file.
